The UK’s desire to prove its international relevance after Brexit, together with the COVID pandemic, produced a unique opportunity: a two-year Presidency of the UN climate talks for the country that has long been the most active in climate change diplomacy. A chance to test a new approach – after thirty years of slow progress, better late than never.

Chapter 13 surveys and assesses the different ways in which election laws and practices impact racial equality in the political process and the distribution of resources and power that stems from those elections. Topics include voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement, and racial redistricting, as well as immigrant political incorporation and language access. Themed boxes include recent court cases on voter ID, specific voting rights cases, and noncitizen voting.

A core justification for the electoral college, and its violations of political equality, is that it is necessary to protect important interests that would be overlooked or harmed under a system of direct election of the president. Yet such claims are based on faulty premises. States—including states with small populations—do not embody coherent, unified interests and communities, and they have little need for protection. Even if they did, the electoral college does not provide it. Contrary to the claims of its supporters, candidates do not pay attention to small states. The electoral college actually distorts the campaign by discouraging candidates from paying attention to small states and to much of the rest of the country as well. Instead, they devote their attention to competitive states. It is also the case that people of color do not benefit from the electoral college, because they are not well positioned to determine the outcomes in states. As a result, the electoral college system discourages attention to their interests. It does, however, provide the potential for any cohesive special interest concentrated in a large, competitive state to exercise disproportionate power.

The emergence of a Mongol state in succession to the Kereyit khanate led to the creation of the largest land-based empire in history and a new people. The Mongols and their partners deployed and elaborated shared steppe political traditions that valued trade and customized the resources of both steppe and sedentary worlds. Under Chinggis Khan’s successor Ögödei, the mission of sacred world conquest and the ideology, governing mechanisms, and fiscal policies that enabled the attainment of this mission achieved sturdy articulation. Chinggisid priorities engendered massive demographic dislocation and transfers of peoples, and new patterns of commerce to support a robust imperial culture of consumption, patronage, and display. Early qa’ans’ ideological prerogatives and attempts to assert tighter control over resources inevitably clashed with their kinfolk’s customary claims. Tensions erupted into open civil war in 1260, but the new Chinggisid communicative space across Eurasia survived the breakup of the United Empire.

Chapter 3 summarizes existing theories of election-related violence and introduces a theory of violence as a result of elite misperception. Existing theories rely upon the assumption that politicians choice of violence as an electoral tactic is based on an accurate assessment its relative costs and benefits. The theory of elite misperception, on the other hand, builds on two insights: (1) that voter backlash against violence is substantial and can cost politicians votes and (2) politicians frequently misjudge voter preferences – including with respect to violence – which can lead them to overestimate its benefits as an electoral tactic. The theory points to the difficulties politicians face in accurately assessing the impact of electoral tactics, as well as to the prevalence of cognitive biases that can cause them to misinterpret what information they have. It also highlights the importance of founding elections in determining which electoral tactics – violence included – are considered effective and worthy of emulation. With these insights in mind, the theory explains the incidence and persistence of election-related violence as a result of politicians misperceptions about voter preferences and the effects of violence on voting rather than the objective electoral benefits that violence provides.

Chapter 6 addressed the puzzle of why politicians employ violence as an electoral tactic in Kenya when the benefits of doing so are uncertain at best. Data from survey experiments with politicians that parallel those conducted with voters – as well as evidence from qualitative interviews – show that, contrary to what the literature assumes, politicians misperceive the effects of violence and violent ethnic rhetoric on voter preferences over candidates for office, underestimating the size and breadth of voter backlash against the use of these tactics. This misperception explains why election-related violence continues to occur in Kenya despite its questionable efficacy as an electoral tactic. Furthermore, access to information alone does not appear to be enough to correct politicians misperceptions in this domain. Elite misperception can explain why violence occurs in the course of electoral competition even when its efficacy is in doubt.

This chapter summarizes the argument and findings presented in the book, explores a number of their implications, and discusses their relevance to broader debates. It argues that the books findings point to a need for research to more carefully evaluate the costs of violent electoral tactics in addition to its electoral benefits, including more micro-level research – such as that presented in the book – that explores voter responses to violence. In addition, scholars should ask more explicitly whether and how political elites are able to accurately assess the relative costs and benefits of violence and other electoral tactics. Future research should delve deeper into the question of how and why elite misperceive voter preferences, and when and why it is most likely to occur.

The UK’s desire to prove its international relevance after Brexit, together with the COVID pandemic, produced a unique opportunity: a two-year Presidency of the UN climate talks for the country that has long been the most active in climate change diplomacy. A chance to test a new approach – after thirty years of slow progress, better late than never.

Reducing air pollution, a leading cause of death, has become a critical goal worldwide. However, the degree of success has varied greatly, even in the same locality over time. Theories and empirical studies so far mainly explain the static existence of pollution. The major social science explanations for the existence of pollution are: (1) sacrificing environmental quality at the altar of the economy; (2) pursuing short-sighted environmental planning; and (3) exploiting information asymmetry to weaken environmental monitoring and enforcement. However, they do not explain the systematic temporal variation in environmental policy implementation. This book fills this critical gap and takes a different view than the existing works regarding several factors that explain reported changes in air quality, namely the manipulation of air quality data by subnational officials and the effect of ad hoc, top-down implementation campaigns on actual air quality. The rest of the chapter provides an overview of the mixed methods used, intended audiences, and a roadmap for the book.

Race and racism have long played a central role in American campaigns and elections. Racial politics have changed considerably in recent history, but out-group animus continues to play a decisive role in White political behaviour and preferences. This phenomenon is becoming even more visible due to the well-documented shift from implicit to explicit racial attitudes. Furthermore, the electorate is quickly becoming more diverse and will become majority-minority within the next few decades. Therefore, candidates of colour will become more likely to run for office and hold a larger share of American political representation – forcing parties to polarise on racial issues. Similarly, the increased importance of racial minority voters has driven the process of cross-racial mobilisation, where White candidates must seek to broaden their appeal to reflect this diverse voting base. This chapter examines the extant history and literature, detailing the increasing significance of race and racism.

Theories of democracy all insist on some basic conditions in order for citizens to hold their elected officials accountable. One of the first ones to mention is an openness to new information about the world that might influence beliefs about a politician’s performance, character, intelligence and the like. In recent decades, BPS has discovered that this basic assumption is regularly violated. Citizens and elites often resist new and credible information in favor of their existing beliefs and viewpoints even when they would greatly benefit from updating those stands. In this chapter, we review a related set of theories captured under the umbrella of motivated reasoning that attempts to understand why, exploring the role of cognitive dissonance, self-esteem, and group identity in shaping individuals’ goals when processing information. While the field has no concrete answers yet, we at least have begun to estimate the often dire consequences of arguing from our existing attitudes to our perceptions of the world – top-down processing – instead of the other way around.

A large body of research shows exposure to racialized media and racist campaign communication can increase the likelihood that racial attitudes influence Americans’ subsequent political evaluations. Recent political trends, however, suggest existing models may no longer adequately explain the effects of racial and racist messages among whites and non-whites alike. Of particular importance for this question is whether implicitly racial messages still prime white Americans’ racial attitudes. Additional questions considered in this chapter include the following. Do classic theories of racial priming apply to political messages about other racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups? Who is most susceptible to racial priming? When should researchers measure racial attitudes in survey experiments? How can we design racial messages that are implicit? And do identity-based appeals and attacks commonly used today still prime ethno-racial identity attachments? We synthesize debates in the extant research on racial priming, explain why experiments are the best approach for measuring racial priming effects, discuss how to overcome several design and methodological challenges facing racial priming scholars, and then propose an agenda for future research to help address a variety of outstanding questions in this increasingly important area of scholarship.